The Russian authorities transferred the body of the oppositionist Alexei Navalny on Saturday after she tried to restore him during the week, his political team reports.
Dozens of Russian celebrities, artists, activists and journalists have recorded a video address to President Vladimir Putin in recent days with a request to transfer the body of Navalny to his family, and more than 98,000 Russians have signed a petition organized by a human rights agency.
Earlier, on Saturday, the daughter of Navalny also joined the campaign, 23-year-old Dasha Navalny, publishing on X, earlier Twitter, "give my dad's body to my grandmother."
Declaring the breakthrough, Kira Yarmysh, a spokesman for Navalny, said it was unclear whether the authorities would interfere with the organization of the funeral.
The mother of Navalny, Lyudmila Navalna, stated that she wanted him to be delivered to Moscow for public farewell, as is customary in Russia, and that his funeral and burial would take place at a Troyekurov Cemetery, where many prominent Russians. Including opposition figures, were buried.
Earlier, Navalna stated that the Investigative Committee of Russia, its main federal investigative body, pressed on it so that it would agree to small private funerals with the participation of only family members.
“The funeral is still ahead. We do not know if the authorities will prevent him from carrying it as the family wants and as Alexei deserves. We will report as the information is received, ”Yarmysh said. She thanked the thousands of Russians who supported the Navalny campaign to return her son's body.
The 47-year-old Navalny was Putin's worst rival and one of the country's most famous political prisoners. He was imprisoned for his campaign for free and democratic Russia and died on February 16 in the Polar Wolf prison in the Yamalo-Nenets region north of the Polar Circle.
Navalny's widow Julia Navalna accused Putin of killing her husband and delaying her body to hide the cause of death. The death certificate issued later this week indicates the cause of his death as "natural causes".
According to the director of the Foundation for the fight against corruption of Navalny Ivan Zhdanov, by Friday it was revealed that Russian officials may not give away the body of the family at all, but threatened to bury it in the icy land in a remote northern prison colony.
This would deprive him of his family and supporters of the right to funeral and farewell ceremony, and would prevent his grave from becoming a place where the Russians could pay tribute and his courage in the confrontation of Putin.
After Lyudmila Navalna came to prison on February 17 to find the body, she encountered an eight -day Kafkian battle with representatives of the Investigative Committee to take her son for burial.
In the beginning, she and her lawyers collided with a brick wall, and officials forbade them to enter the morgue and refused to even tell them where the body was stored. One of the prison staff initially told her that her son had died of "sudden death syndrome."
A few days later, formally calling the cause of death "natural cause", the staff of the Investigative Committee showed her the body late in the evening. But in the absence of lawyers, they pressed strongly on her so that she agreed to small private funerals, threatening that his body would be laid out if she does not accept their conditions.
On Thursday, she released a video stating that the officials "blackmail me, put the conditions where, when Alex should be buried. It's illegal. "
On Friday, she was given a three -hour ultimatum and said that Navalny was buried without her permission in the colony, if she, according to Zhdanov, would not agree to a private burial.
The decision to give Lyudmila to her son, her son meant a rare victory for a person who opposed the Russian authorities, but she also showed how obscene the public confrontation caused the Kremlin.
Earlier on Saturday, Julia Navalna, dressed in Black, recorded a gloomy video, which criticized Putin's declared religious piety, accusing him both of her husband's "murder" and in refusing to issue a body for burial.
“But Putin was not enough murder. Now the body [Navalny] in hostages. He mocks his mother and makes her agree to secret funerals, ”she said. "... He is threatened with buried directly in the colony where he was killed."
According to her, officials "tortured" Lyudmila Navalnya Lies and threats. The order of "to break" the mother of Navalny would come directly from Putin, not from an employee of the Investigative Committee in Salehard, a city of 33 miles from prison where he died, she continued. The body of Navalny from the night of death is in the morgue of Salehard.
Yulia Navalna stated that Putin was now exposed as a fraudster.
“We already knew that Putin's faith was fake. But now we see it clearer than ever before, ”she said. "No real Christian could never do what Putin is doing with Alexei's body now."
